You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.

To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life.

We all got holes in our lives. Nobody dies in a perfect garment.

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.